Sunday, February 10, 2013

It is a culture in it's own right, with it's own central principles to which participant cultures agree to submit.

Participant cultures are rarely by origin multicultural. Often it requires certain adaptations on part of the cultural adherents for a culture to become compatible with a multicultural society.

There is a vaguely defined and arbitrary distinction between public and private, a line that may be drawn differently in different multicultural societies, which requires cultures to cede the public realm to a common neutral ground.

Incompatible cultures which are reluctant to adapt, especially when the incompatibility is seen as a reflection of authenticity, and/or are reluctant to cede the public sphere, would come to see multiculturalism as a threat and they would in turn become a threat for the multicultural culture.

Multiculturalism can truly be fruitful to society only if all participating and prevailing cultures in that society adapt to meet each others needs.

I fear, however, that all it ends up doing in the end is to excuse otherwise abhorrent actions - female genital mutilation, forced marriages - as a person's culture that should be respected and tolerated by society.

"It did not seem to Plato any insult to philosophy that it should be transformed into literature, realized as drama, and beautified with style; nor any derogation to its dignity that it should apply itself, even intelligibly, to living problems of morality and the state."